Two different Saturn problems. Please Help!
May 13, 2011 17:41:53 GMT
Post by mrprofessorkaos on May 13, 2011 17:41:53 GMT
Hello there all. I'm glad I found this place for I am out of ideas. I have two Saturns and they need help.
1) I've had a model 1 for around 10 years now, sparsely used, that I purchased at Funcoland and worked great for many years. In recent years it would stop reading discs correctly; not registering as a application, "drive empty" or "disc not suitable for system - specifically Guardian Heroes. It was the only game that wouldn't boot. After around 3 years in storage, I booted it up and most games worked fine but a few, like Guardian Heroes, would not boot OR get to the title screen and just stop working (not freeze, it just couldn't access any more information). I opened her up and reseated all ribbon cables, adjusted the height of the spindle, and adjusted the yellow laser screw (which I had never done before and looked as if it had never been touched). Afterwords, it worked great for many hours and I assumed the problem had been solved. Now, two weeks later, I was playing Guardian Heroes and about 30 minutes into play it was loading a new level (and had been taking way too long to load anything) and it just stopped at the level title with the access light blinking. Is there anything else I can do?
1A) During my that last Guardian Heroes session something odd was happening. Every so often my friend and I were frozen - our characters wouldn't respond. It was as if BOTH of our controllers had just died. I would unplug them and plug them back in and that seemed to work but it happened 3 times in a half hour period. The controllers have also been in storage for 3 years but...I mean...they're controllers. Not much going on inside them. I plan on cleaning them thoroughly but.....just a very odd problem.
2) After "fixing" the Model 1 I figured it might be a good idea to have a spare Saturn around. I found one on ebay for CHEAP that "would not read discs". Great! I fixed that! I receive it in the mail, set her up, and it works great. No problems. After around 20 minutes of playing Fighters Megamix something very, very strange happened; my character went from Japanese to African American. What I mean is the textures went nuts. Panicking, I restarted the system only to find that the boot screen was quite glitchy. It looked as if the screen was way off center and when the Saturn logo came up it was almost beside itself with heavy scan lines. The audio was also odd....kind of "gainy". Then the "dashboard" would never show up but the sound of it asking for a disc was there. If I rebooted with a disc in the same thing would happen but the game would boot. For instance; Guardian Heroes' opening movie would play but it was almost as if there were two separate images of the same move, both off center, and with heavy scan lines. After, the title screen appeared garbled. It was very similar to when the NES would start messing up and things became made out of letters. The logo was off center and sliced up and the menu options where spelled with numbers and special characters. Obviously this is a data transmission issue from the CDrom drive to the motherboard, right? My action replay displays FINE in this Saturn. I reseated the ribbon cables and checked the motherboard for loose chips but everything seemed fine. This Saturn will work fine around 50% of the time for 10 - 30 minutes. Any ideas?
Thanks for reading. I know this was a long post but I wanted to give you detail. Any help is greatly appreciated. Its good to know there are people out there devoted to keeping Saturns alive and well.
1) I've had a model 1 for around 10 years now, sparsely used, that I purchased at Funcoland and worked great for many years. In recent years it would stop reading discs correctly; not registering as a application, "drive empty" or "disc not suitable for system - specifically Guardian Heroes. It was the only game that wouldn't boot. After around 3 years in storage, I booted it up and most games worked fine but a few, like Guardian Heroes, would not boot OR get to the title screen and just stop working (not freeze, it just couldn't access any more information). I opened her up and reseated all ribbon cables, adjusted the height of the spindle, and adjusted the yellow laser screw (which I had never done before and looked as if it had never been touched). Afterwords, it worked great for many hours and I assumed the problem had been solved. Now, two weeks later, I was playing Guardian Heroes and about 30 minutes into play it was loading a new level (and had been taking way too long to load anything) and it just stopped at the level title with the access light blinking. Is there anything else I can do?
1A) During my that last Guardian Heroes session something odd was happening. Every so often my friend and I were frozen - our characters wouldn't respond. It was as if BOTH of our controllers had just died. I would unplug them and plug them back in and that seemed to work but it happened 3 times in a half hour period. The controllers have also been in storage for 3 years but...I mean...they're controllers. Not much going on inside them. I plan on cleaning them thoroughly but.....just a very odd problem.
2) After "fixing" the Model 1 I figured it might be a good idea to have a spare Saturn around. I found one on ebay for CHEAP that "would not read discs". Great! I fixed that! I receive it in the mail, set her up, and it works great. No problems. After around 20 minutes of playing Fighters Megamix something very, very strange happened; my character went from Japanese to African American. What I mean is the textures went nuts. Panicking, I restarted the system only to find that the boot screen was quite glitchy. It looked as if the screen was way off center and when the Saturn logo came up it was almost beside itself with heavy scan lines. The audio was also odd....kind of "gainy". Then the "dashboard" would never show up but the sound of it asking for a disc was there. If I rebooted with a disc in the same thing would happen but the game would boot. For instance; Guardian Heroes' opening movie would play but it was almost as if there were two separate images of the same move, both off center, and with heavy scan lines. After, the title screen appeared garbled. It was very similar to when the NES would start messing up and things became made out of letters. The logo was off center and sliced up and the menu options where spelled with numbers and special characters. Obviously this is a data transmission issue from the CDrom drive to the motherboard, right? My action replay displays FINE in this Saturn. I reseated the ribbon cables and checked the motherboard for loose chips but everything seemed fine. This Saturn will work fine around 50% of the time for 10 - 30 minutes. Any ideas?
Thanks for reading. I know this was a long post but I wanted to give you detail. Any help is greatly appreciated. Its good to know there are people out there devoted to keeping Saturns alive and well.
